


Look Me In The Eye

by SpencerMalloy



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, But not the sexual kind, GAD, Happy Ending, HoO - Freeform, M/M, Mention of Panic Attacks, NSFW, Nico is a phone sex operator and I thought I wouldn't expand on it but I totally am, PJO, Soulmate AU, Suggestive Dialogue, Will is anxious as fuck, characters are aged up, general anxiety disorder, i think, nsfw-ish, read at your own discretion my dudes, solangelo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-05-16 12:02:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14810990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpencerMalloy/pseuds/SpencerMalloy
Summary: Eye color soulmate AU. Nico's life is...his life is in shambles. Sure, he makes enough to pay rent and feed himself, but that doesn't mean he isn't lonely all the time. Will's doing...fine. If you could call it that. He's finally going to therapy, and it's helping, it really is- but it hasn't stopped him from having panic attacks. When he meets Nico for the first time and can finally see the color of Nico's eyes in his everyday life, things are...panic-inducing. He's trying, he is, but he can't be in a relationship until he's healthy, no matter how lovesick Nico is. No matter how lovesick he is, either, even if he won't admit it.





	1. Chapter 1

Somehow Will had managed to make it to twenty-four without finding his soulmate. Okay, he was being melodramatic, but compared to all of his friends it seemed like a hell of a long time to wait. Honestly, though, it could be worse. He could be Percy. He’d known Annabeth for his entire life—and her eyes were gray. Gray. The color that apparently replaced the color of your soulmate’s eyes in your own vision until you saw them for the first time. It was almost painful that it took her so long to realize she hadn’t been able to tell what color her father’s favorite tie was until her first day of pre-school, when she was sent home early after being bit. By Percy. It was an interesting story if nothing else.

                Apparently his soulmate’s eye color was brown. A lot of things in life were brown, but Will had a pretty hard time telling them apart from things that were gray. Tree bark was brown. Hair and skin and chocolate could be shades of brown. A predominant amount of his life was gray because of this, he supposed, but it didn’t bother him. Gray was beautiful. To be honest he wasn’t sure if he was ready for half of his life to snap into some weird color that would probably give him a headache.

                He tried not to think about it, mostly. Tried to just get on with his regular life as best he could and ignore the fact that there was someone out there who thought the sky was gray. That one day their whole world would be thrown out of wack and…And Will just couldn’t figure out how he was supposed to fall in love with anyone.

                The idea that one day everything would be normal and then it wouldn’t, that that in a second a color he couldn’t even imagine would swarm his vision and he’d be expected to fall in love with a person whose eyes were the trigger of it—the idea kept him inside most of the time. Kept him from making eye contact as often as possible. His friends understood. For the most part. He was lucky, they only ever asked him to come to parties when it was something really important. Which it was. Hazel had finally finished her degree in computer graphics—and if Will was being completely honest, Hazel was his favorite. She was the little sister he never had and he would do anything for her. Even if that included meeting her actual older siblings and making awkward small talk with her parents while he waited for an appropriate amount of time pass before their friends all bugged out and left to get fall-down drunk. Which he also didn’t do much of, because the prospect of waking up with a hangover and the ability to see a new color was just too much to handle. He might really have a breakdown if that happened. He liked to think his anxiety meds were working but…there were just some things they didn’t help with.

                “Listen,” Hazel said, gray fingers loose on the steering wheel. She was driving slow enough that the gray of the trunks and the budding green nubs on the trees didn’t even blur together. The sodas were buckled into the seatbelts of the backseat—Percy and Jason decided they needed to have a contest to see who could chug the fastest and Leo couldn’t stop them. Now all of their snapchats had screenshots of Jason mid-belch. Kinda worth it. “I know that you don’t like meeting new people,” She said.

                He scoffed. “Understatement.”

                She rolled her eyes. “The only new people there will be my parents and my brother and sister. Somehow I seriously doubt that any of them are your soulmate.”

                “I know,” he groaned. “I just—“

                “I get it. It’s scary. And everyone in my family does have brown eyes—but hey, so do I,” She said. “And I’m not your soulmate.”

                “Good,” He said. “You snore.” Her fist landed on his shoulder and he rubbed the sting out if it, laughing.

                “You know what I mean.” She pulled into the driveway behind an unfamiliar car that hadn’t been there when they left. Her deep gray eyes stared into his when she turned. What would he do when they changed? “Besides. You don’t have to stay with your soulmate—a lot of people are doing it now, it’s 2018. Live a little. Fuck the system.”

                He sighed. “You’d really still talk to me if my soulmate was your sister and I bounced on her?”

                “Of course.” She reached into the back and tossed a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper into his lap. “Just walk out.”

                “Just walk out?” He asked.

                She smiled. “Yep. Bianca can handle it, don’t worry.”

                His arms were heavy but his shoulders weighed a little less as they walked into the house.

                ***

                Nico spent most days looking at the sky. That might sound lame, but it was true and he didn’t really care about being lame anyway. He loved the sky, the way stark white clouds made peaceful blobs up there and his little human brain refused to do anything but make patterns out of them, to recognize them as shapes that they were never meant to be. When the clouds changed to match the sky and the rain flooded down, everything would be wiped clean. If liking that was lame, then he was lame.

                The sky wasn’t the only blue thing, apparently. The ocean was blue and Sully from Monster’s Inc. was blue and, apparently, his walls were blue. He thought he’d chosen a tepid gray, but after he was done and cleaning up the mess, the empty can very clearly said ‘cerulean’. So that would be a surprise when he got to see it.

                There were a million things Nico wanted to do, a million things he wanted to see, and he wasn’t going to lie and try to act cool—he’d have liked to see them in color. In full color. Things were so beautiful the way they were, another color could only make things better. It might also be nice to see them with someone else…Yeah. He liked that idea. The soulmate thing had always comforted him, someone out there was walking around with blue eyes and the inability to tell if someone was old enough to have gray hair or not and they were destined to be with him. God, it made him all flutter-struck just thinking about it sometimes. That part, though, he wouldn’t admit. Some things he got to keep to himself.

                It’d been a minute since he’d seen Hazel and he missed his baby sister. They didn’t get to spend a lot of time together before he moved out because their families had just merged, only a year or two, but Nico loved her and she was so much easier to get along with when she wasn’t hogging the bathroom. It may not seem like it, but it did take awhile to get his hair to look this effortlessly messy.

                No matter how much of a bathroom hog she was, Nico was happy that someone in their family had a normal job. Hades was a mortician, Bianca was a workaholic at some high stakes magazine in New York, and Marie read tarot. He was a waiter at a local Italian joint. The old people liked him because he could speak the language—Oh. And he worked for a phone sex line from 4-7 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. A remarkable amount of people wanted to get off on the Lord’s day of rest and he definitely had some stories to tell. Anyway, at least someone came out of their household with a normal job, and he was eternally grateful it was Hazel. She deserved it.

                Her friends, though. Now they were a piece of work. The first thing Nico saw when he stepped through the door were two comatose (but oddly attractive?) guys lying on the floor with empty 2 liters around them. Piper and a blonde girl were chatting causally on the couch, Reyna and Frank were trying to wake the guys up—and Leo, as always, was snapchatting it all.

                “Don’t you have any shame, Valdez?” he asked.

                Leo scoffed and snapped a picture of him, the flash blinding him. No doubt he’d made a stupid face.

                “Delete that— _don’t run, you coward!”_

                Leo’s surprising amount of stamina paired with his knowledge of the house’s layout made him tough to catch, but he did. Nico pulled him back by the suspenders and grabbed the phone.

                “Now unlock it so I can delete it you prick,” he demanded.

                Leo laughed nervously. “I might have kind of already sent it to everyone in my contacts?” he said.

                Nico was about to strangle him when the door opened. Hazel and a blonde guy were back with auxiliary soda and—and woah. Woah. That guy was _hot._ Some people waited until they met their soulmates to have relationships and have sex…Nico wasn’t one of those people. Leo managed to wriggle out of Nico’s grip while he was distracted by the guys’ legs.

                “Nico!” Hazel swarmed him in a hug, the cold 2 liter pressed against his back. But she was so warm, it didn’t matter. He buried his face in her hair and for just a moment pretended that he wasn’t extremely lonely, that this was a regular occurrence, that he didn’t spend his free time alone in his boxers trying to learn Spanish on Duolingo. But just for a moment, because when she pulled away she grabbed her friend’s hand and pulled him in.

                “Nico, meet Will. Will, this is my brother—“

                “Fuck,” Nico swore, his eyes wide and fixed on Will’s. Blue.

                “Oh.” Will said softly. His body was rigid and his eyes were fixed on the floor now.

                The wall behind Will was a deep, deep blue. Almost black but not quite. The skinny jeans Nico had on were blue, not gray. It was all so, so beautiful.

                Will stared at the floor. It’d been six weeks and four days since his last panic attack. He’d have to flip the counter thingy in his room back to zero. His chest constricted and not in a good way, not the way he thought it would when he was thirteen and so, so lonely. This was bad. This was awful. Brown was so…soft. But it was everywhere and it was so overwhelming. And Nico? A guy? Sure Will had thought of it but…he didn’t expect things to go this way. 

                _Just walk out._

                So he did.           


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: mention of panic attacks, mention of medication use (not abuse)  
> No voltron spoilers, but I do mention voltron.

                There was no salvaging the party after that, but they tried anyway. The rest of Hazel’s friends introduced themselves, surprisingly none of them ran after their friend. It kind of pissed Nico off, but hey, what did he know about a complete stranger? Everyone made small talk with each other as Nico realized for the first time that grey was actually an eye color, that not everyone with light irises had blue eyes. It was much less exciting than it could have been. Having Will look at him in terror and then walk out might have put a damper on his mood.

 Nico left early, slipped out the back trying not to ruin anything else. It didn’t work, he realized, as the door fell shut again after Hazel stepped outside.

                “He seemed nice,” he joked. “Is he on the track team or something? He was out of here pretty quick.”

                Hazel didn’t laugh. “I didn’t think this would happen,” she said. “I thought if anything Bianca, maybe, I had no idea either of you—“

                “Gotta love the heteronormative eye, right?” his voice was dry. “I should have told you.”

                “No. I should have asked.”

                He laughed. “ _No._ Because it was none of your business.” He sunk into her porch swing and their shifting weight made it sway lightly.

                “Hazel?” His eyes were squeezed shut. “When you met Frank and…How did he react?”

                The dull picking of her nails betrayed her nerves. “We were both. It…It didn’t happen like this.”

                He sighed. Of course it didn’t. This was a shitty plot twist out of some bs YA novel. When he opened his eyes, his breath hitched.

                “Pretty cool, right?” she asked. He kept looking at the sky. “That’s how I felt the first time I saw my mom after I met Frank.”

                Her mouth pulled into a frown. “I told him to leave. Before we came in, Will got really nervous. He’s got a lot of anxiety about the soulmate thing and I told him he could leave. If it was Bianca. That she could take it,” she said. “I didn’t know it would be you.”

                He inhaled and tried not to notice how the cerulean burned his retinas. God, he loved it.

                “I understand.” Nico didn’t look at her.

                All the air left her body. “Please, Nico, please don’t be upset. I never meant for this to happen.”

                He could pretend like he wasn’t absolutely shattered. It wouldn’t be the first time. It wasn’t like she planned this. He pushed up from his seat.

                “I love you. Go…Go find Will. He looked like he was having a panic attack when he left. I’m going to need him to be okay if I ever want him to warm up to me.”

                She nodded up at him. This was supposed to be her party and he’d all but ruined it.

                “I’ll take you to Red Lobster for fucking up your graduation party later,” he said. “But maybe give Will my number when you find him?” his voice got quiet. “I’d love to hear from him.”

                He crossed through the path on the side of the house so he didn’t have to walk through a house full of people to get to his car. He wanted to go home so badly. He wanted to go home and collapse and not think about the blank look on his soulmate’s face as he ran out. The only thing stopping him was the color of his walls.

 

                ***

 

                When Will woke up, he found himself curled up on the rug next to his bed, fingers digging into the plush strands of it.

                He remembered hyperventilating, his chest constricting, his head starting to feel light and his fingers going numb. He remembered plugging in his headphones and turning on Blind Melon’s _No Rain_. He remembered pulling at the carpet so he didn’t rip out his hair—he didn’t remember falling asleep. But then, he never did.

                His ribs were marble in his chest when he tried to breathe. He’d done this before, he’d do this again, he _knew_ the best thing for him would be to drag himself off of the floor and into bed. Call it a day. Try again tomorrow. But through the silky voice of Shannon Hoon, he heard his phone ringing. Hazel’s contact picture was flashing on his screen, even if her color scheme had changed, he still recognized her out of the corner of his eye.

                “Hello?”

                She let out a sigh of relief. “I’ve been calling for half an hour, thank God you’re okay.”

                He let his cheek slump back against the floor. “I think you’ve overestimated my okayness, but alright.”

                “Where are you?” she asked. “Is anyone with you?”

                “My room and no. I have the worst headache, though.”

                “I’ll bring you some Tylenol and tea and we can talk?”

                “I’d really rather _not_ talk about anything that’s happened today, actually.”

                “I’ll come over with Tylenol and tea and we’ll watch Voltron?”

                He groaned. “Please.”

                “On my way.”

                After the click he pulled himself up. He dragged his comforter out to the living room to camp on the couch—neither of them subscribed to the heterosexual nonsense of opposite gendered friends not being able to share a bed, but the TV was in the living room. Will had read in one of the many self-help books he borrowed from the library that having a TV in the bedroom wasn’t good. Stay up late vamping, sleep in late, depression increases, anxiety increases, his whole life is thrown out of wack—maybe it wasn’t the best advice he’d taken from the self-help section, but he was willing to try anything at this point.

                Hazel made the best tea. He wasn’t entirely sure what she did to it, (he suspected the fusion of several teas and way too much honey than he should ever consume in one sitting) and she refused to tell him. Before that had been fine, he expected she’d always be around to make it. Now?...

                They sat swaddled in the comforter and blankets that usually stayed draped over the back of his plaid couch. Piper had been so jealous that he got the gay couch and not her.

                “We’re still friends, right?”

                “Duh.” She blew on her tea. “I mean, _our_ relationship isn’t changing. I love you and Nico equally but if either one of you expects me to cut ties with the other then—“

                “I would never ask you to stop talking to your brother!” Will slumped into the couch. “Listen, I’m not a monster. I just…I just. You know. I can’t right now. I’m not healthy enough to do this.”

                “I love you and you should definitely not do anything that’s emotionally draining if you can’t handle it,” Hazel said. Voltron was assembling on the screen in front of them. “But I think that you should know that Nico, up close, is a dead ringer for Keith Kogane and honestly? Isn’t that all you could want from a guy?”

                Will snorted. “I’m more of a Shiro stan but sure, why not, I’ll take the emotionally unstable mullet-boy.”

                She shrugged. “He’s Italian— _I know how much you love **pasta** , William, don’t play like this is the worst thing in the world.” _

                Will was getting flustered now. Only Hazel was allowed to tease him like this. “Okay, maybe one day when I don’t feel like dying 24/7 your brother and I can have some spaghetti, is that what you want?!”

                Hazel made direct eye contact with him while she sipped her tea. “Maybe. I’m sure he would love to make some meatballs for you—“

                “My _CHRISTIAN HOME, HAZEL!”_

_“YOU’RE AGNOSTIC!”_

Will managed to set his tea on the table before he broke out into laughter. As silly as it might sound, crying definitely cleaned him out emotionally. He was also pretty sure it cleared up his acne, but that part he didn’t tell anyone.

                They had to restart the episode and by the end of the night they had rewatched all of season 1. Will was starting to get used to how fucking _brown_ everything in his life was, and, if he was being honest, he was lying to himself about not liking it. Around eleven Hazel’s phone dinged.

                “That’s Frank, he wants to know if I’m coming home tonight.”

                “Are you?” he asked.

                She looked at him skeptically. “I dunno, am I? Are you going to be okay by yourself?”

                He shrugged. “I’m all panic-ed out. I’ll probably just eat Doritos until two am and then crash.”

                She shook her head. “If you say so. Call me if you need me, okay? I’ll be right over.”

                He leaned over to hug her before she left, buried his face in her shoulder. So much had changed today, but she managed to stay the same.

                “I’ll see you tomorrow, Will—Oh. Nico…Nico asked me to give you his number,” she said. “Maybe you guys could text? You don’t have to use it right away or anything, but he thought you might want to have it anyway.” She plucked a pen from her pocket and jotted a nine numbered sequence onto the pad of sticky notes he kept on the table.

                “He texts in full sentences like a dork but hey, so do you.”

                When she left the only sounds that remained were the roars of lions that weren’t really lions and the pounding in his own chest. How he was supposed to find any sense of normalcy now was a mystery to him, but maybe… Maybe that’s what soulmates were all about.

                He considered it. Stared at the number for a long while. Tasted the name in his mouth a couple times: _Nico, Nico, Nico_ …

                The yellow sticky note crumpled easily in his fist and landed at the bottom of the trashcan with a resounding _swish._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAD to end it like that, don't hate me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nsfw conversation, Nico is a phone sex worker. They're all aged up.

                Nico woke up and Nico woke up, but he never really remembered going to sleep. He guessed it was because he never _really_ fell asleep, he just sort of passed out. All day shifts at the bistro, six hour shifts for Miss Dare’s five days a week and extra hours whenever he wanted them. He lived on five hours of sleep most days and honestly? He didn’t really care.

                About six months since Hazel’s grad party and he wasn’t ashamed to say he had no life. Six months since he first saw Will, since months since Hazel told him Will wasn’t up for even talking to him, six months since he slept in his own room for the last time. How he managed to pick a paint that matched Will’s eyes perfectly he’ll never know, but one things for sure: His heart ached inexplicably for a boy he’d never even got to meet.

                He was face down on the couch when his phone rang. His _spare_ phone. The pay-as-you-go flip phone with the Tetris theme as the ringtone because if he was going to be moaning into his speaker for the next five to fifteen minutes, he might as well start with something nostalgic.

                He recognized the collar ID and propped his head up on the arm of the couch, his shoulders untensing. Phil. An easy first call.

                “Hey, baby.” He slipped into his operator voice: not too high, not too gravelly, subject to change at his client’s preference. Phil stayed on the line longer when he played up his accent, so that’s what he did.

                “Been thinkin’ bout you all day, Marco,” Phil sighed. Speakerphone clued Nico in to the soft noises of Phil already getting himself off. He could keep him on the line longer if he went for something more domestic.

                “Missed you, too, babe. Long day at work?”

                Phil groaned. “You know it. Couldn’t wait to come home to you, get you all hot and bothered underneath me.”

                Nico sucked in a breath that sounded like a gasp. “Tell me _exactly_ what you need, baby. Tonight is all. About. You.”

                Ten minutes. Coo, moan, gasp, tell him he’s the love of his life in a breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. Phil groans, cums and tells ‘Marco’ he’ll call him back soon.

                It might be skeazy but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t half hard. He’d probably get off at least once for real tonight—but hey. Not like he was getting any anywhere else.

                No telling when the next call would come in so he pulled his laptop from the coffee table and rested it in his lap. Miss Dare’s had an online site and the operator’s she employed were all supposed to keep blogs for their working personas. Leaving his Marco Monroe account unlocked AND bookmarked on his desktop might not be the best choice—but it’s not like he’d remember to update his page unless it stared him in the face every time he wanted to watch Jenna Marbles on YouTube.

                Marco Monroe was a wide eyed, barely legal foreign journalism student at a local college. He liked sun bathing, long walks on the beach and quickies in the back of fast cars. Dislikes? Nonexistent. Bad for business. He was bisexual and muscular and had a rigorous skincare routine— _loves_ facials. Basically Marco was the exact opposite of everything Nico really was. That was how he liked it. The less personal, the better.

                He set to work writing a status update, letting his mind wonder. Marco Monroe was interesting but not, no, _never_ politically radical. Good for one night stands or bringing home to meet the parents—and Nico couldn’t even get an _email_ from his literal soulmate. What kind of fucked up joke was the universe playing on him?

                The cold air on the back of his neck reminded him he’d left the real life window open. He was too lazy to get up and close it, so he opened several tumblr tabs on his laptop instead. He could already feel it overheating as he typed.

                His phone vibrated with his Tetris ringtone on the couch next to him as he hit enter on the status update.

**Marco Monroe: _Wish I didn’t have to be alone tonight._**

***

                Will didn’t think about it much. The new colors, the boy who he’d been ignoring for months, his _soulmate._ There were other things going on, things he had to take care of before he was ready to have a relationship. He was lucky if he could talk to his friends without getting drained—how the hell could anyone expect him to fall in love right now? So no. No matter how many times Hazel slipped Nico’s phone number or email or snapchat code into his hand, he always tossed it as soon as she’d left. He didn’t have time for this.

                Work was fine. School was fine. He was always exhausted, though. The new medicine didn’t exactly…help with that. He’d switched meds around a month ago and things were…Okay. They were fine. He was so fucking tired all the time and he’d been high for the first week and a half, so there was that. But he’d managed not to have a panic attack since the switch, which was the best he could have hoped for. The familiar rooster noises of his alarm told him he was going to be late for therapy if he didn’t stop moping soon.

                He regarded what his current outfit was. He had just come off of the morning shift at work and changed directly into pajamas. Loose flannel pants, a ratty old t-shirt and bare feet. Three in the afternoon was way too late to go into the outside world looking like this, but he found it in himself not to care. His yellow flip-flops clashed horribly with the rest of his outfit, but Josephine wouldn’t mind.

                The stairs leading up to her office were absolutely killer. Four flights, all directly up—Will was a fit guy but even he found himself lightheaded at the top.

                It…wasn’t the best session. It wasn’t bad, but he’d made the mistake of going off on a tangent that Josephine followed right until the end of their time. He sighed as he walked out of the building. Not all sessions could be groundbreaking, sometimes they were just looking up how to properly care for a succulent. Then it hit him. Literally.

                He didn’t even see what had knocked him to the ground until he looked up. The boy’s face was framed by dark hair and the sun right behind his head made him look all that more angelic. Will scanned his face until he met his eyes and forgot how to breathe.

                “Hi,” Nico whispered. If Will had been on his feet he probably would have run. Instead Nico extended his hand and Will let him help him up.

                He couldn’t think of anything to say. That didn’t really matter, though, because Nico talked a mile a minute.

                “Please don’t run off or anything, please, Hazel won’t give me your number and I guess you have mine but you never call,” he rambled, “And I get it. The whole soulmate system isn’t for everybody and you have a lot going on right now—but I’m not a bad guy and you don’t have to love me, I just want to talk to you. Please.”

                Maybe it was the bags under his eyes or the way he held himself, like even though he was pleading for Will to stay, he was already preparing for him to leave again. Maybe it was that now that he was in front of him, in person, Nico wasn’t so scary anymore. He was less of a terrifying idea and more of a person. Whatever it was that made him different than the day they had first met, it had convinced Will to give it a chance.

                “Do you want to get coffee or something?” He asked. He bit the inside of his cheek.

                A small smile tugged the sides of Nico’s mouth up. “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this story hasn't gotten finished because it's how I've been coping and coming to terms with the anxiety/depression meds I started. The various chapters kinda follow Will into the stages of starting meds, even though that's not exactly the main focus of the story. That's why it's taking so long to finish, I needed to be on my medication for awhile to see how it would end.
> 
> Oh, and I fucking love all the comments about being mad at Will and all the angst he's causing. It's just really so funny because I gave him GAD because I have it and I wanted to explore how someone with my mental illness might deal with something that could possibly be so stressful--and y'all fucking hate it. Like bitch, me too, the fuck. xD
> 
> Honestly three cheers for Nico in this story, he gets fucking pulled around like a rag doll in this one. I guess you guys do, too.  
> I expect there to be maybe two chapters of this left? I dunno. They're not written yet and I'm a mess and I have to go to work so enjoy.  
> Thanks for sticking around, it means a lot. :)


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